Troubleshooting Java SE Applications

This section helps in troubleshooting problems that might occur with applications that are developed using the Sun Microsystems Inc. release of the Java SE platform. It provides information on various debugging tools and techniques that can help to debug such possible problems.

Troubleshooting Guides

• Java SE Troubleshooting and Diagnostic Guide (pdf) (html)

  This guide helps trouble-shoot problems that might arise with applications that are deployed using the Sun Microsystems Inc. release of Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition 6.0 (J2SE 6.0). The document provides a description of the tools, command line options, and other items that can be used when analyzing a problem. The document also provides guidance on how to approach some general issues such as a crash, hang, or memory resource issues.

• Troubleshooting Guide for Desktop Technologies (pdf) (html)

  This guide helps troubleshoot problems that might occur with Java SE desktop technologies, such as Swing, AWT, Java 2D, and so forth.

Debugging Tools

Tools and Utilities bundled with Java SE

• Java SE Troubleshooting Tools and Utilities

Native Debugging Tools

• Debugging Tools on Windows Platform
• Debugging Tools on Solaris and Linux Platforms

Quick Help on Troubleshooting

Quick tips on how to troubleshoot and debug some typical problems that might occur with Java SE based applications.

• Quick Troubleshooting Tips on Solaris OS and Linux
• Quick Troubleshooting Tips on Windows

For more troubleshooting information please visit Troubleshooting web page.

Articles/Presentations

• Observability Using Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition 5.0, and the Solaris OS
• Observability Using Java Platform, Standard Edition 6, and Solaris OS

What's New

• HAT tool released in JDK 6.0 as jhat.
• JDK 6.0 has new built-in heap dumpers to dump heap in HPROF format that can be analysed using any heap analysing tool e.g HAT tool. These built-in heap dumpers can be used to dump heap at out of memory errors, from a hung application or from a core file.
• More info on:
  • Heap Dumps
    
  • Heap Dump Snapshots
    
  • From Monitoring to Diagnosing Memory Problem in Java SE 6

Debugging Experiences

Cracked a hard problem, debugged a hang/crash or got hold of any new debugging tool? Please share your troubleshooting and debugging experiences here. There is no better way than to learn from experiences. So help community learn from your debugging experiences. Contact us at javase-bigadmin-ext [at] sun.com.

• Native Memory Leaks and libumem - Kevin Walls
• Debugging Experience using WinDbg- Poonam Bajaj